RUNNING WITH RUDY

So many folks here in Washington are taking it for granted that Bill Clinton's wife has the Dem nomination sewed up that they've gone on to handicapping who her running mate will be.

Her ridiculous performance in the Dem debate this week (10/30) may have given them a moment of doubt, but just a moment, for she has, they will tell you, no serious opposition.

Hillary supporters can't take bat-eared neophytes like Obambi or the Breck Boy seriously.  The rest of the Gang of Eight up on the debating stage with her are just there for the media spotlight.

Except for one fellow who's really not running for president, but running for running-mate.  That's New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson, and he's everyone's odds-on favorite to be Hillary's pick.  He's dumb as a stump (which he confirmed this week when he said the government should "come clean" over what it knows about aliens crashing their spacecraft in Roswell 60 years ago – just about nine months before Hillary was born, by the way.)  Nonetheless, word is he's her #2.

More interesting is who will run with Rudy. 

Not that he has it nailed.  There's vastly more talent on the GOP candidate side than the Dems'.  Yet he's so out in front that the DC buzz has begun on who he'll pick.  The thinking goes like this.

It seems clear that Rudy has to have someone from the south.  A Giuliani-Romney ticket, for example, two guys from the northeast, is an obvious non-starter.  The region any Republican has to virtually sweep is the south, so a northerner has to reach below Mason-Dixon to "balance the ticket."

One top choice would the former governor of Florida, extremely popular and extremely capable as well as pretty solidly conservative, if only he didn't have the fatal last name of Bush.

Another could be the current governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford.  Solid conservative on most all fiscal and social issues except a weakness on illegal immigration.  I've seen him give a showcase speech to a group of influential conservatives wanting to be impressed – and they weren't.  Real low on the charisma and intellectual sparkle scale.

He's also from a small southern state without big electoral heft, but the handicappers say he's probably on Rudy's short list.

Not on the list is Mike Huckabee.  Too much of a glib huckster, awful on taxes and spending, worse on illegal immigration, splits the religious right vote rather than unites it – too many negatives for Rudy.

At the front of the running-mate line, the focus of the handicapping buzz right now is Fred Thompson.  Conservative enough to soothe most on the r-right in a tizzy over Rudy.  From a big southern state with electoral clout who's also nationally famous.  Would make a tremendous spokesman and communicator for a Rudy White House – and help keep that White House more to the right on many issues than it otherwise might be.

The more you think about it, the more you realize the smart guys who handicap these things may be on to something with a Giuliani-Thompson ticket:  Rudy/Fred 08!

Thompson on the ticket nails the south down shut for the GOP.  The entire south has a loathing for the PIAPS that makes its voters physically nauseous, and Thompson would overcome any hesitancy over Rudy the New Yorker.

Beyond the south, it's hard to see a single state where Thompson, as a famous movie/television star exuding a homey gravitas and a non-threatening likeable conservatism, wouldn't help the ticket.  Thompson hasn't got the energy and fire and experience for the top of the ticket, but he'd make an aces running mate, especially for Rudy.

That's the thinking now.  Bets are already being placed on Giuliani-Thompson to clean Hillary's electoral clock.  You heard it here first.